Original Letter

France

17th November 1917.

My Dearest Maidie:–

The forenoon will be spent in cleaning up. And just for example you should see me. Unlike the soldat who fights with a gun or bomb my time for cleaning up is before 8.00 ae emma. But I was up at 6.30 and got my tail thoroughly burred. I have got my new pants and puttees on and my shoes shined, had a kind of a sort of a bath and shined and shaved Right this minute I feel like a citizen. I got the armourer to clean my rifle and a Runner is cleaning my equipment. In the meantime I have had a pretty busy day but I’m taking a half holiday to write to you Nearly everyone is on parade and I may have a few undisturbed moments

Wasn’t it the luckiest getting letters yesterday. Move days have always been a bug bear in that respect and I haven’t yet got over being tickled and surprised about it. And then one of them especially was such a beautiful letter and such a beautiful unnecessary apology. You Sweetheart, you’re great aren’t you? You['re] a baby. I had a huge laugh last night. There was a pretty generous rum issue and Turk who loves his rum had too much. He was as funny as a crutch. He couldn’t see his eyes were streaming, he could talk but was not at all clear about what he was saying. Finally he had to get into his bed which he did, unassisted. I had one issue about a week ago but its too rich for my blood – drinking it is all the same [as] fighting with scythes. I had mine just before going to bed. I didn’t notice it when I got into bed but when I got up in the morning my head was sore and I was almost staggering. I didn’t have to spend all day wondering what was the cause of it either. So right there I decided that someone else could have mine.

We are very comfortable here in our bit of a hut but it is only for to-day as we move again tomorrow and each day for three or four days. But its going to be good this time mostly by rail and bus. That’s nuts and raisins for the troops that bus and rail stuff. There is no mail yet to-day but I am pulling hard for it and there is time yet for something to turn up. Things are looking good these days and I am sure that very soon we shall have good news. And it cannot be too soon.

Now, Dearest, I am going to leave you for to-day do you mind? But before I go I must tell you that I love you with every bit of love that I am capable of and I just don’t want anything in the world but to be with you.

Your own

Ross

Turk

About Sergeant Lawson Turcotte

A fellow NCO in Rossís battalion. Of all the men in the battalion, Turkey seems to have been the one Ross worked with most closely in the course of his duties.

bath

Note

Desmond Morton, in When Your Number’s Up, tells us that

Part of any rest was a bath parade, ideally once a week, sometimes only monthly. Facilities ranged from former breweries with open vats to the elegantly tiled minehead showers near Vimy Ridge [see Ross’s letter of Nov. 25, 1917] where the men were crowded three to a stall. Many baths were housed in prefabricated metal huts where the winter wind whistled and water froze on the duckboards. Rusty nozzles emitted a few minutes of warm water, stopped for men to soap themselves and gushed a few more minutes of cold water, leaving the shivering men to dry themselves with a dirty towel or a flannel shirttail. Medical officers insisted that hot showers would be “enervating.”

“Imagine a watering can with all the holes but three blocked up, spraying tepid water for three minutes in a room without doors or windows, and a cold windy day,” Garnet Durham explained. A detail of men could be processed in thirty minutes. They were soon lousy again. Most baths included a laundry where Belgian refugee women washed, sorted, and sometimes repaired socks, shirts, and underwear. Attendants tossed “clean” clothes to shivering soldiers as they emerged. Sharp-eyed soldiers spotted the larvae that remained in the seams of flannel shirts and woollen drawers. In 1918, when lice were finally identified as the carriers of trench fever, a pair of Canadian medical officers finally had their ideas on effective disinfection adopted, and both baths and disinfection improved.

Either Ross is not being completely frank with Mary or he was lucky, since he seems to have had more pleasant experiences with bathing than the average soldier as described by Morton.

Source: Desmond Morton, When Your Number’s Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War (Toronto: Random House, 1993), 145.

The 50th Battalion will move to LA POUPLIER to morrow with Battalion Headquarters at W.7.a.8.8. and billets at W.7 and W.8. Entrainment will be at BRANDHOEK SIDING ... and detrainment at CAESTRE STATION

Cleaning up all morning and preparation for Inspection in afternoon. 2.00 to 4.30 P.M. Inspection of Companies by O.C. of Transport and Bands and Field Kitchens by 2nd in Command and Special Sections by Adjutant.